Political Commentary, Speculation & Debate

Australia’s history of equal marriage is somewhat rocky, and we’re soon to reach a pinnacle moment.

Marriage equality has been hotly debated, especially in recent years. A major turning point was the US’ decision to unanimously offer same-sex marriages to couples in all 50 states, but that still hasn’t changed many countries positions on the issue:

The key is available in the footnote, but in general, the deep blue colour is where same sex marriage is legalised.

How The Vote Came to be

The then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott held a six-hour emergency meeting in August 2015. The policy was quite vague then, wether it would be a plebiscite, referendum or survey. Turnball, Australia’s current Prime Minister had previously voted against it, but adopted the policy in September 2015 when he became leader. After a lot of arguing and debates, the idea of having a legally binding plebiscite was scrapped in place of a simple ‘postal survey’ where the government are simply asking all citizens how they feel on the issue.

The Vote

Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?

The question is fairly simple. As with most votes there is a yes and no campaign running in mainstream media, each with political parties and celebrities backing them. Legally, this is only a survey because it is run by the ‘Australian Bureau of Statistics’ and not by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission).

This means the postal survey is not legally binding. A yes vote win will allow MPs to vote on a same-sex marriage bill, and if a no vote wins, they won’t be allowed to vote on it.

What next?

Survey forms will be sent out on September 12th, with the latest return date being November 7th. The result will be announced on November 15th, with the vote, if any, will be expected shortly after.

Personal Response

This is an ‘issue’ that shouldn’t be an issue. Many people have somewhat reasonable reasons for not support same-sex marriage, but in almost all cases, these people have never been in the shoes of a gay person and have never witnessed what the campaigning against their love is doing to them. That said, I am intrigued to see the survey response, as I say about many foreign nations, every country is different and so their citizens are different. We may see a different response to that we would expect from a British parliament.

I don’t know where I was when David Cameron stepped down as prime minister, simply because it came as no surprise after his brexit campaign and reaction.

Theresa May has an interesting past, but one that won’t particularly differ from many other tory politicians: Somewhat privileged and made to be in power. (Although this is a conversation for another day.)

Before Politics

On October 1st 1956, in Eastbourne, May was born to Zaidee Mary & Hubert Braiser and she was their only child. May was educated primarily in state schools, after a very short experience in an independent catholic school. At the age of 13, she won a place at a Grammar school. She went on to read geography at The University of Oxford.

Her first career was in the Bank of England, and later as a financial consultant for the ‘Association for Payment Clearing Services’ 1

Getting into Parliament

From 1986 to 1994 she served as a councillor for Durnsford ward. She stood, unsuccessfully, for the safe labour seat of North West Durham in 1992. She stood in the 1994 Barking by-election, coming third with a mere 1,976 votes. (10.4%) A new seat, Maidenhead, was created ahead of the 1997 general election, where she won with double the votes than that of the second place. (24,344 votes, 49.8%)

Before Leadership

She became a member of the opposition cabinet straight away, as ‘Shadow Spokesman for Schools, Disabled People and Women.’ In 1999 she was appointed ‘Shadow Education and Employment Secretary.’ Iain Duncan Smith kept her in the cabinet after the 2001 election, as he moved her to the Transport portfolio. She became the first female chairman of the tories in 2002, and between 2004 and 2010 she went through a multitude of different shadow cabinet roles.

May 12th 2010, 6 days after the general election she was appointed Home Secretary2. During her six years in the role she had a heavy focus on surveillance, with particular prevalence on the highly controversial ‘Snooper’s Charter3.’ She also had focus on interior terrorism, including the banning of Zakir Naik 4, and the Cumbria Shootings 5.

How did she get into power?

This is where a majority of her controversy starts. After the Brexit vote in June 2016, David Cameron didn’t feel he could lead the country in the right direction especially after his long campaign about staying in the EU. As the way it goes, the Conservative party needed to choose a new leader, and they would then most likely become the next prime minister. (If the queen chooses them, and she basically has to.) The leaders race went a little like this6:

She began her campaign almost as soon as Cameron resigned, with her catchphrase becoming ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Conservative MPs voted in a ballot to determine the 2 candidates who would be put forward to Conservative party members who would make the final decision. Fox was eliminated in round 1, with Crabb withdrawing later in the day. Gove lost in the second round and Leadsom withdrew before the party member’s vote, leaving only candidate. She became party leader July 11th, and then prime minister on July 13th.

This is why people question wether she undemocratically runs the country. Many people will vote in a general election because of the party leader, and since that has changed, should the ruling party really get to choose the next leader? The only people who chose her were members of the Conservative party at the time. Many called for a general election, especially after the such a prominent part of British history: the Brexit vote7. But this is allowed to happen because that’s quite literally what is supposed to happen, which draws back to wether it really is a basic flaw in the way the British constitution works, but again: a debate for another time.

Sources:

A majority of information came from the below wikipedia articles, and some minor details from news articles.

This is a term that isn’t used particularly often and when I came across it, I didn’t know what it meant. It was after research when I went ’That would never be allowed’, which then lead to a surprise.

What is Gerrymandering?

The dictionary gives quite a good description of gerrymandering:

(to) Manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favour one party or class.

It really is that simple.

Not simple? I’ll break it down. In the UK we have 650 constituencies, but this is changing in 2018 as part of the ‘Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster Constituencies.’ 1 In this case it was to reduce the number of seats in the house of commons, and because the number of constituencies has to match the number of seats in the house, some borders would have to change and other areas merge. 2

But how were the borders decided? This is where gerrymandering can take place. Let’s use the totally real, ‘Blue Crocodile Party’ I promise that isn’t defamatory. If the BCP knew where all their voters lived (down to the local ward would where it would be useful,) they could use this information to make sure the borders were drawn in such a way that all their voters are in the same constituencies and therefore would have a higher chance of getting the most votes for that seat, giving them a higher chance of becoming the house’s main party. But that’s only if they have a say in how the borders are grouped.

The UK’s four boundary commissions (one for each constituent country) are very aware of this, and so there are only four members of each commission of which three can make decisions. (The speaker of the house, at the moment John Bercow 3, is the ex officio chairman of each body.) These members are independent and impartial and in most cases have to use official statistics to help them draw the boundaries at Parliaments request. Their boundaries are continuously scrutinised and there is almost always a public consultation.

Has gerrymandering happened before?

As explained, there is a very little chance of this happening in the UK and so there are very few examples of where boundaries have been allegedly gerrymandered. If we take a look at our friends across the pond, it looks like a different story. The US history4 is littered with people being paid or bribed to redraw voting districts into a certain way, and as each state draws their own, there isn’t an easy way to adjudicate this. Some states have introduced committees to draw their boundaries, but only a few of these are independent commissions. The US has been criticised multiple times due to their lack of legislation.

How can gerrymandering be stopped?

There are multiple ways we could stop gerrymandering happening, which are explained in the video at the end of the article. But I see gerrymandering as proof of a much bigger problem. The problem of each citizen only getting one vote. This then leads to the bigger question about wether ‘First Past The Post’ is sufficient in today’s Britain, or perhaps it needs to replaced by another voting system.

Gerrymandering in a nutshell:

If you have a little more time CGPGrey will tell you the same thing, but in a nicer video:

When I was going to sleep on June 8th, I knew the next day was going to be pretty bad news. The poll predictions have been fairly reliable over the last few years, and it would require a large error margin to prevent the expected.

A hung parliament

Whenever I think of a hung parliament, I always think back to the first election I payed any sort of useful attention to in 2010. During the First Ministry of Cameron & Clegg, Clegg was seemingly a tool to show conservatives will to work with other parties, while still ignoring most of what the Liberal Democrats. Although, by the end of the coalition the Lib Dems really were losing support after voting in favour of raising tuition fees, which is contradictory to their manifesto. <see video below>

Although the comical factor still rings through, I don’t feel this is the main reason the Lib Dems didn’t get much of their manifesto pushed through.

But the point to pay attention to, was that coalitions don’t really work. It was quite an act watching the Tories working with the Lib Dems. Both parties didn’t really get much done because of the countless disagreements, and the tories looming majority, more on this at another time. It could be argued, that because of Cameron’s ‘bullying’ techniques, he was able to push more through. As such the Lib Dems just had to agree, in fear of the coalition falling apart which would be bad news for their falling public opinion and vote share.

Secondly, coalitions always remind me of a very key topic in many GCSE History specifications: Weimar Germany. In summary the weimar constitution used proportional representation. This meant the % of votes dictated the % of seats in the ‘Reichstag’. This means to get a majority number of seats you needed at least 1 in 2 people to vote for you. As you’d expected, this almost never happens, so coalitions are the only answer.

If you look at the pattern of elections, and how close they are to each other, you could probably guess these coalitions rarely held together.

Because of the coalitions decisions were rarely made and most decisions were watered down. This resulted in the Nazi Party rioting in the reichstag, and so forcing Hitler into power.

I don’t think anyone believes that coalitions are 100% positive and many people far from it, but I think we need to make the most of it, otherwise it will be a 5 year struggle.